Cloud Application Marketplace 2014 - 2019

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Chapter 2: Overview
2.1 Understanding Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is computing in which large groups of remote servers are networked in such a way to provide some centralized service (i.e.,
data storage or online access to computer services or resources). Cloud computing ("the cloud") focuses on maximizing the effectiveness of
the shared resources. Cloud resources are usually not only shared by multiple users but are also dynamically reallocated per demand. This can
work for allocating resources to users. For example, a cloud computer facility that serves European users during European business hours
with a specific application (e.g., email) may reallocate the same resources to serve North American users during North America's business
hours with a different application (e.g., a web server). This approach should maximize the use of computing power thus reducing operational
and overhead costs as well since less power, air conditioning, rack space, etc. are required for a variety of functions.
With cloud computing, multiple users can access a single server to retrieve and update their data without purchasing licenses for different
applications. Cloud Computing allows an organization to move away from a traditional IT CAPEX computing model (i.e., buy the dedicated
hardware and depreciate it over a period of time) to the OPEX model (use a shared cloud infrastructure and pay as one uses it).
Cloud systems should not be misunderstood as any another form of resource provisioning infrastructure. In fact, multiple opportunities occur
from the principles for cloud infrastructures which will facilitate further types of applications, reduced development and provisioning time of
different services.

Figure 2: SaaS
Cloud computing has peculiar features which differentiate it from classical resource and service provisioning environments and these are:
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It is almost infinitely scalable;

It presents one or more of an infrastructure for platforms, a platform which is for applications or applications themselves

Clouds can be used for every function right from disaster recovery, business continuity to a fully outsourced ICT service for an enterprise;

Cloud transfer the costs for a business opportunity from CAPEX to OPEX. This gives a finer control of expenditure and reduces the costly
asset acquisition and maintenance by decreasing the entry threshold barrier;

Right now the major cloud providers had already invested in large scale infrastructure and they offer a cloud service to exploit it;

Cloud offerings are heterogeneous and without agreed interfaces;

Cloud providers fundamentally provide data centers for outsourcing;

There are apprehensions over security if an organization places its valuable knowledge, information and data on an external service;

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There are fears over availability and business continuity with some recent examples of failures;

There is worry over data shipping with anticipated broadband speeds.

Cloud computing providers offer their services according to several fundamental models:
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Core Models

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service);

PaaS (Platform as a Service);

SaaS (Software as a Service) and collectively

New models XaaS (Everything as a Service) where X represents the specific service over the cloud.

DaaS (Data as a Service)

BDaaS (Big Data as a Service)

SaaS (Storage as a Service)

CaaS (Communication as a Service)

NaaS (Network as a Service)

MaaS (Monitoring as a Service)

Figure 3: Cloud Service Models

2.2 Cloud Foundations

Cloud Computing is one of the most powerful technology innovations today. Noteworthy investments have been made on multiple initiatives in
the start-up world, big technology players as well as business institutions. All participants and players in the technology and IT services industry
are eagerly involved in understanding what cloud can offer, how it can change the information technology backdrop, its impact on their
businesses, advantages it can provide as well as the challenges associated in leveraging the concept.

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Figure 4: Benefits of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the convergence of multiple concepts which includes virtualization, distributed applications, grid, maturity of enterprise
software applications and enterprise IT management. This convergence enables a dynamic, flexible and economic approach for deploying
and scaling enterprise IT.
It is fundamentally based on the concept of performing Computing as a Utility. It also has the potential to change a large part of the IT industry
by designing software as attractive as a service and changing the way IT hardware is designed, purchased, provisioned and managed.
Businesses have become more pliant because of the couple of economic downturn and there is a significant shift in the way IT investments are
planned and implemented today. Cloud computing is extremely important to businesses as it helps them to essentially shift their capital
intensive focus to a flexible operational management model. In this flexible model, enterprises are not required to be concerned about overinvesting in services which are not profitable, hence wasting expensive resources, or under-investing in services that deliver outstanding
results which in turn results in missing potential customers and revenue. The crucial requirement to achieve this flexibility and the related
inherent behaviors will increase the focus on cloud computing.
There are many successful examples of this payment model in the industry today. Virtualization solutions for hardware platforms have verified
to be very successful and most of the financial services institutions have commenced or running enterprise wide programs in this area.
Cloud computing deployment model is characterized into four categories:
Public Cloud - Public cloud services are characterized as being provided to clients from a third party service provider through the Internet.
The users data is not publically visible and public cloud vendors usually give an access control mechanism for their users. Public clouds give
an elastic, cost effective means to deploy solutions to their clients.
Private Cloud - A private cloud presents many of the advantages of a public cloud computing environment which are being elastic and
service based. Additionally, data and processes are managed within the enterprise without the limitations of network bandwidth, security
exposures and legal requirements. This helps in greater control of the cloud infrastructure, by increasing security and resiliency.
Community Cloud - A community cloud is controlled and used by a group of enterprise which has shared interests which are specific security
requirements or a common mission. The members of the community share access to the data and applications in the cloud.
Hybrid Cloud - A hybrid cloud is an amalgamation of a public and private cloud that interoperates. In this model users usually outsource nonbusiness-critical information and processing to the public cloud at the same time keeping business-critical services and data in their control.

2.2.1 Grid Computing

Grid computing is the compilation of computer resources from numerous locations to reach a common goal. The grid can be considered as a
distributed system with non-interactive workloads which includes a large number of files. What differentiates grid computing from conventional
high performance computing systems such as cluster computing is that grids have a propensity to be more loosely coupled, heterogeneous,
and geographically dispersed. Though a single grid can be dedicated to a particular application, yet a grid is used for a variety of purposes.
Grids are often built with general-purpose grid middleware software libraries. In a basic grid computing system, every computer can access

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the resources of every other computer which belongs to the network.

Figure 5: How Grid Computing Works Source: How Stuff Works

Grid size varies a substantial amount. Grids are a form of distributed computing whereby a super virtual computer is comprised of numerous
networked loosely coupled computers getting together to perform large tasks. For some applications, distributed or grid computing, can be
seen as a special type of parallel computing that depends on computers connected to a network by a conventional network interface, such as
Ethernet. This is in contrast to the customary view of a supercomputer, which has several processors connected via a local high-speed
computer bus. A grid computing system applies that same concept and shares the load across multiple computers to complete tasks more
effectively and quickly.
2.2.1.1 Market segmentation of the grid computing market
For the segmentation of the grid computing market, two perspectives need to be considered: the provider side and the user side:
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The Provider Side

The overall grid market includes many specific markets. These are the grid middleware market, the market for grid-enabled applications,
the utility computing market, and the Software-as-a-Service market.
Grid middleware is a particular software product that facilitates the sharing of heterogeneous resources, and virtual organizations. It is
installed and incorporated into the existing infrastructure of the involved organizations. It also offers a special layer which is located among
the heterogeneous infrastructure and the specific user applications. Major grid middleware are Globus Toolkit, gLite, and UNICORE.
Utility computing is defined as the provision of grid computing and applications as service either as an open grid utility or as a hosting
solution for enterprises. Major players in the utility computing market are Sun Microsystems, IBM, and HP.
Grid-enabled applications are particular software applications which can exploit grid infrastructure, which is made possible by the use of
grid middleware.
They are converged in a one-to-many model, and SaaS uses a Pay as You Use model or a subscription model which is based on usage.
Providers of SaaS do not essentially own the computing resources themselves, which are needed to run their SaaS.

The User Side

For organizations, on the demand or user side of the grid computing market, multiple segments have major implications for their IT
deployment strategy. The IT deployment strategy as well as the type of IT investments made are relevant aspects for potential grid users
and play a critical role for grid adoption.
Grid computing systems connect computer resources together in a way that allows someone to use one computer and that computer
access and leverage the total power of all the computers in the system. To the individual user, it is as if the user's computer has
transformed into a supercomputer.

2.3 Cloud Technologies and Architecture

The early driver of extensive adoption of cloud computing was the SaaS delivery model. This let the software provider give access to its
software over the Internet and abolished the need for the user to purchase licenses and store the software on their own hardware. It offered the
usage scalability and customization based on the needs and goals of the clients.

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From that time, a combination of technologies has emerged which have further increased the demand for cloud computing including:
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Server Virtualization: Various hardware and software resources are joined together and users are offered access. It provides the same
appearance and capabilities of a dedicated server, but without the cost.
Service-oriented Architecture (SOA): SOA manages software code so that one set of data, and the code written to process it, can be
reused by other applications in the business.
Open source Software: A products source code is made available to the public with few or no copyright restrictions.
Web Development: Basic website development services have reduced the cost and made updating possible for less technically skilled
workers.
Mashups: In mashups, Application programming interfaces (APIs) request services from other software sources and websites. APIs play
a major role in enabling mashups, which are websites made up of data from multiple sources.

The Internet has made all of these new technologies possible and available to the masses.

Cloud Architecture
The Cloud Computing Architecture of a cloud solution is the structure of the system, which includes on premise and cloud resources, services,
middleware, and software elements, their geo-location, their externally visible properties and the relationships among them.
Cloud architecture usually entails multiple cloud components communicating with each other via a loose coupling mechanism such as a
messaging queue. Elastic provisioning entails intelligence in the use of tight or loose coupling of cloud resources, services, middleware, and
software components.
In the area of cloud computing, security depends largely on having the right architecture for the right application. Enterprises must understand
the individual requirements of their applications, and if they are already using a cloud platform, they should try to understand the corresponding
cloud architecture.
A cloud computing architecture comprises of a front end and a back end. They connect to each other via a network, usually the Internet. The
front end is the side the computer user, or client, sees. The back end is the cloudsection of the system.

Figure 6: Cloud Computing Architecture Source: Andrewxhill

Front End
The front end of the cloud computing system consists of the clients devices or a computer network and some applications which are required
for accessing the cloud computing system. All the cloud computing systems do not provide the same interface to users. Web services such as
electronic mail programs use several existing web browsers, including Firefox, Microsofts internet explorer or Apples Safari. Other types of
front end systems have some unique applications which provide network access to its clients.

Back End
Back end refers to physical peripherals. In cloud computing, the back end is cloud itself which may include numerous computer machines, data
storage systems and servers. Clusters of these clouds make a whole cloud computing system. In theory, a cloud computing system can include
nearly any type of web application program right from video games to applications for data processing, software development and
entertainment.
Typically, every application would have its individual dedicated server for services. A central server is set up which is utilized for administering

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the whole system. The central server is also used for monitoring clients demand as well as traffic to make sure that everything of system runs
smoothly.
There are some protocols which are followed by this server and it also uses a middleware. Middleware let computers, which are connected on
network, communicate with each other. If any cloud computing service provider has many clients, then the demand for huge storage space will
be very high. Many service providers need hundreds of storage devices. The cloud computing system must have a copy of all the data of its
clients. Keeping a copy of data is called redundancy.

2.3.1 Software Defined Networking (SDN)

Software-defined Networking (SDN) is a novel way of designing, building and managing networks. The basic concept is that SDN splits the
networks control and forward planes to make it easier to optimize everything.
In this networking environment, a controller operates as the brains,and provides an abstract, centralized view of the overall network. Because
of the Controller, network administrators can rapidly and simply make and push out decisions on how the underlying systems (switches,
routers) of the forwarding plane will handle the traffic. The most common protocol which is used in SDN networks to assist the communication
between the Controller (called the Southbound API) and the switches is OpenFlow.
An SDN environment also employs open, APIs to support all the services and applications deployed over the network. These APIs, usually
called Northbound APIs, assist innovation and permit efficient service orchestration and automation. Accordingly, SDN facilitates a network
administrator to shape traffic and install services to address changing business needs, without having to touch each individual switch or router
in the forwarding plane.
2.3.1.1 SDN Deployment Models
2.3.1.1.1 Symmetric vs. Asymmetric
In an asymmetric model, SDN global information is centralized, and edge driving is disseminated to the degree that possible. The thoughts
after such an approach are clear and centralization makes global consolidation very easy and dissemination reduces SDN traffic aggregationencapsulation pressures. This model, though, generates questions regarding the exact relationships between completely varied types of SDN
elements.
In a Symmetrically distributed SDN model an endeavor is taken to increase global information distribution capability and SDN aggregation
performance potential so that the SDN elements are essentially one type of component. A group of such elements can form an SDN overlay as
long as there is network connectivity among any subset.
2.3.1.1.2 Floodless vs Flood-based
In a flood-based model, a huge amount of the global information sharing is attained by using well known broadcast and multicast mechanisms.
This helps in making SDN models more Symmetric and also this model leverages current transparent bridging principles summarized
dynamically so as to achieve global awareness and identity learning. One of the disadvantages of this model is that as more locations are
added, the load per location increases, which in turn degrades scalability.
In a Floodless model, all forwarding depends on global exact match, which is usually attained by using Distributed Hashing and Distributed
Caching of SDN lookup tables.
2.3.1.1.3 Host-based vs. Network-centric
In a host-based model an assumption is made regarding the use of SDN in data-centers with lots of virtual machines moving to facilitate
elasticity. Under this assumption the SDN encapsulation processing is usually done at the host HyperVisor for the local virtual machines. This
design decreases SDN edge traffic pressures and uses free processing based on each host standby core capacity.
In a Network-Centric design a clearer delineation is made between network edge and end points. This type of SDN edge is connected with the
access of top of rack device and outside the host endpoints. This is a traditional approach to networking which does not count on end-points to
do any routing function.

2.3.2 Virtualization
Virtualization, in computing, means the act of generating a virtual, not real, version of something which includes but not limited to a virtual
computer hardware platform, operating system, storage device, or computer network resources.
In fact partitioning a hard drive is also considered virtualization because one drive is partitioned into two separate hard drives. Devices,
applications and human users can interact with the virtual resources as if it were a real single logical resource. The term virtualization is
gaining popularity and as a result the term is now associated with a number of computing technologies which includes the following:
2.3.2.1 Server Virtualization
Server virtualization is the division of a physical server into smaller virtual servers to help maximize the organizationsserver resources. In
server virtualization the resources of the server itself are hidden, or veiled, from users, and software is used to split the physical server into
multiple virtual environments which are called virtual or private servers. This is in contrast to devoting one server to a single application or task.

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Figure 7: Server Virtualization Source: Tredent

Common Uses of Server Virtualization

One common usage of server virtualization is in web servers. Using virtual web servers is a common way to offer low-cost web hosting
services. Rather than installing a separate computer for each web server, dozens of virtual servers can co-reside on the same computer.

Benefits of Server Virtualization

Server virtualization has many benefits. For example, it allows every virtual server to run its own operating system and each virtual server can
also be individually rebooted of one another. Server virtualization also decreases costs since less hardware is needed and that alone saves
money.
Server virtualization also saves space via consolidation as various machines can be consolidated into one server running many virtual
environments. It also consumes resources to the fullest so it can also save on operational costs.
2.3.2.2 Hardware Virtualization
This is the most popular Virtualization prevalent in corporations and IT companies. Here, Virtualization software usually runs on an actual
physical server to capture its image and port it to being a Virtual Serverwith all the same settings intact.
This image afterwards runs from a part of the existing virtual server farm on the installed technology which can be VMware or Hyper-v.
Consolidating the physical server to a virtual one gives many benefits which are:
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Making server upgrades simple as RAM and CPU can be added on the fly to a virtual server

Old server can be re-tasked

No need to worry about physical component failure or not being able to find outdated hardware

Smaller carbon foot print because of more efficient power distribution and utilization in a virtual environment.

2.3.2.3 Desktop Virtualization

Desktop virtualization is becoming popular in corporations as businesses move away from the pain of maintaining expensive hardware which
is usually not fully utilized. VMware was the first organization to come out with an enterprise implementation and they named this technology
VDI or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. From that time other major players such as Microsoft and Citrix have also joined in to take some share of
the VDI or Desktop Virtualization market.
In Desktop Virtualization, classically a workstation is virtualized with all its applications, user customizations and preferences all in a virtual
machine.
This virtual machine can be accessed from everywhere in the enterprise by using any workstation therefore cutting down on licensing costs for
installing software on individual machines.
Machine maintenance and patch management gets much easier for IT support personnel. Users like it because their machine is constantly
working and they always have access to their customizations on their virtual machines. Virtual Desktops also decrease the carbon foot print
and enhance the total cost of ownership when compared to maintaining physical machines.
2.3.2.4 Storage Virtualization
The last segment is Storage virtualization. This is where the actual storage space, which used to be offered by SAN or NAS, is virtualized.
Virtualizing storage space means the organization is also virtualizing the Virtual Machine disk files as well. This becomes enormously useful
for the Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery, because with a virtualized infrastructure, the storage across the organization can
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be easily replicated over to another location or even a different geographical location. Organizations are now looking into implementing fault
tolerant clusters for their storage.

2.4 Cloud Computing and Virtualization

Both solutions can help utilize the organizations current resources and technology investments.
Similar to many technologies which were once available only to bigger enterprises, virtualization and cloud computing is being scaled down for
smaller organizations. The two technologies are usually mentioned in the same breath as though they are interchangeable but in reality they
are not.
In enterprise networks, virtualization and cloud computing are typically used together to construct a private cloud infrastructure. For most small
businesses, though, each technology will be deployed individually to gain measurable benefits. In many ways, virtualization and cloud
computing can help the organization in keeping their equipment spending to a minimum and get the best possible use from the equipment they
already have.
First, the organizations have to understand what virtualization and cloud computing are. Virtualization lets one physical server run multiple
individual computing environments. Practically, it is like getting multiple servers for each physical server the organization buy. This technology
is fundamental to cloud computing. Cloud providers have huge data centers full of servers to power their cloud offerings, but they are not able
to allocate a single server to each customer. Therefore, they virtually partition the data on the server which enables each client to work with a
different instance of the same software.
Cloud computing, is an umbrella term that includes virtualization as well. It gives access to complex applications and massive computing
resources through the Web. Small organizations are the ones to adopt cloud computing by subscribing to a cloud-based service, such as
Cisco WebEx, than to construct their own cloud infrastructure on their networks.

2.5 Moving Beyond Cloud Computing

Arguably, cloud computing is one of the most popular technologies in IT today. Currently the number of Smartphones in the US is greater than
the number of laptops. The tablet market is enjoying significant growth, and a majority of consumers have one, two or even three mobile
devices.
Cloud Computing is moving beyond offering just computing and storage services. There are cloud computing services being developed to
provide communications, applications and content services. In spite of growing pains, the cloud marketplace is quickly expanding.
In 2013, the cloud conversation has shifted from why cloudto how can the cloud transform my business?
As businesses continue to discover the value of cloud hosting, new opportunities will keep on emerging for businesses to set themselves apart
with their service subscriptions.
Actually basic cloud storage is far from a bad investment, technological advances have made this technology capable of so much more. The
cloud has entered a new sphere, enhancing communications, applications and content.
As most businesses have the motive of boosting efficiency as a means of managing costs, cloud should prove useful to understand how
additional points factor into the concept of sharing infrastructure via cloud hosting.

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Figure 8: Mixed IT Environment Source: SAP AG

Transformation via the Cloud

The cloud adopters have started focusing on achieving the transformational benefits of the cloud. Most of the cloud users believe that the cloud
is delivering efficiencies and cost savings today. While these are still the main focus for IT organizations, but the business leaders are starting
to accept that the cloud is about more than decreasing expenses and enhancing efficiencies. Many business leaders are exploring how the
advantages and benefits of the cloud can be incorporated into the overall business strategy.

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